Chālid al-Qasrī

Chālid ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Qasrī ( Arabic خالد بن عبد الله القصري, DMG Ḫālid ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Qaṣrī born. 686, † 743/44 in Kufa ) served the Umayyads as governors, first of Mecca and later, during the caliphate of Hishām ibn bAbdalmalik , of Iraq.

Origin and early years

Chālid belonged to the Qasr , a clan of the Arab tribe Badschīla, and had a Christian mother. When and where he was born is not mentioned in any source. However, the historian Chalīfa ibn al-Chaiyāt reports that he was killed in the year 126 dH (743 AD) at the age of 60 years. Accordingly, he must have been born in the year 66 dH (686 AD). He spent part of his youth in Medina . He is mentioned there in connection with singers.

As governor of Mecca

Already as a young man, Chālid seems to have had a relationship with al-Hajjaj ibn Yūsuf . On his recommendation, the caliph Al-Walid I appointed him governor of Mecca in 89 dH (= 707 AD). In this office he carried out various reforms in the pilgrimage ritual. So he determined that from then on women and men were separated at Tawāf . Guards equipped with whips were posted at each column to monitor this gender segregation.

His arrest of Saʿīd ibn Jubair on behalf of al-Hajjaj, who had him executed after his transfer to Iraq, also caused a stir. Saʿīd ibn Jubair had played a leading role in mobilizing the Koran readers during the uprising of Ibn al-Asch Aath (699-701) and then fled to the Ḥaram in Mecca, which served as an asylum . His extradition by Chālid was viewed in pious circles as a grave injustice.

Chālid also built a water pipe, which he led on the orders of the Caliph Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik from a well outside Mecca into the courtyard of the Kaaba to a basin next to the Zamzam well .

As governor of Iraq

After his dismissal from the post of governor in Mecca, which probably took place during the caliphate of Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik , Chālid was briefly employed as envoy for the caliph Yazid II . Around the year 724, Hisham ibn ʿAbdalmalik installed him as governor in Iraq, where at that time there were strong tensions between the tribal groups of the Mudar and Yaman. The fact that Hisham chose him for this office probably had to do with the fact that Chālid belonged to a tribe that did not belong to either of the two groups and could therefore act as an intermediary. However, Chālid himself was soon drawn into the clashes between the two groups because the Mudar began to fight him.

Otherwise little is known about his governorship in Iraq, although his name appears in the second half of the 730s in connection with the suppression of various heretical movements. The heretics he is said to have executed included al-Ja'ad ibn Dirham and the Shi'ite al-Mughira ibn Sa'id . Apparently, however, he himself had little inhibitions about snubbering the Muslims. He built a church for his Christian mother right next to the main mosque in Kufa and publicly stated that Christianity was better than Islam. He was also not afraid to give preference to Zoroastrians and Christians when assigning offices .

Deposition and Assassination

When his tax revenues rose disproportionately as a result of the agricultural reforms he carried out, this is said to have aroused the envy of Hishām. According to the Arab sources, this was the actual reason for his dismissal in 738, after which he remained imprisoned for some time. Released again, Chālid spent some time at the court of Hishām in ar-Rusāfa as well as in Damascus.

Hisham's successor al-Walid II , who preferred the Qais faction among the Arabs and rejected the Yaman, had Chālid, who was considered the leader of the Yaman, seized by his governor in Iraq, Yūsuf ibn ʿUmar ath-Thaqafī, and admitted to Kufa Torture to death. The assassination of al-Walid in April 744 was in revenge for the assassination of Chalid. The Kalbite poet al-Asbagh ibn Dhu'āla wrote about it:

Man mubliġun Qaisan wa-Ḫindifa kulla-hā
wa-sādāti-hā min ʿAbdi Šamsin wa-Hāšimi
qatalnā amīra l-mu'minīna bi-Ḫālidin
wa-biʿnā walīyai ʿahdi-hī bi-darāhimi.

Who communicates it to all the Qais and Chindif,
and their leaders from the ʿAbd Shams and Hashim ?
We killed the commander of the faithful because of Chālid
and sold his two heirs to the throne for money.

literature

• Harald Cornelius: Ḫālid b. ʿAbdallāh al-Qasrī: Governor of Iraq under the Omayyads (724-738 AD). Frankfurt am Main, Univ., Phil. F., Diss., 1958.
• GR Hawting: Art. " Kh ālid ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḳaṣrī" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. IV, pp. 925b-927a.
• Stefan Leder: "Features of the novel in early historiography - The downfall of Khâlid al-Qasrî" in Oriens 32 (1990) 72-96.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cf. Cornelius: Ḫālid b. ʿAbdallāh al-Qasrī . 1958, p. 13.
2. ↑ Cf. Cornelius: Ḫālid b. ʿAbdallāh al-Qasrī . 1958, p. 13.
3. ↑ Cf. al-Azraqī : Aḫbār Makka wa-mā ǧāʾa fī-hā min al-āṯār . Ed. Desert field. Leipzig 1858. p. 365, line 13ff. Digitized
4. ↑ See H. Motzki: Art. "Saʿīd ibn Dj ubayr" in Encyclopaedia of Islam. Second edition. Vol. XII, pp. 697-698,697.
5. ↑ Cf. Cornelius: Ḫālid b. ʿAbdallāh al-Qasrī . 1958, p. 13f.
6. ↑ See Hawting 926b.
7. ↑ Cf. Al-Masʿūdī : Kitāb at-Tanbīh wa-l-išrāf . Ed. Michael Jan de Goeje. Brill, Leiden, 1894. pp. 323f. Digitized .
8. ↑ Cf. Al-Masʿūdī: Kitāb at-Tanbīh wa-l-išrāf . Ed. Michael Jan de Goeje. Brill, Leiden, 1894. p. 324.